The Right Way to Use Images to Drive More Traffic and Engagement

For small and medium businesses aiming to achieve digital transformation, the right use of images and visuals can be a low cost high return strategy resulting in greater website traffic and more engagement. In fact it’s also one of the leading digital marketing tactics that can help your blog posts go viral and strengthen your brand identity.

Visual content not only gets more social media shares but also tends to stick to the minds of your audience for longer periods of time. In contrast, large blocks of text with no images hardly appeal to the senses of an average reader that’s spending less than 15 seconds actively reading a page’s content.

This is because human beings are visually hardwired. Take a look at the stats below:

50% of our brain is actively processing visual information
70% of our sensory receptors rest in the eyes
We capture sense of visually presented ideas in less than 1/10 of a second
90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual in nature (Source: Hubspot)
40% of the people respond better to visuals.
Our brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text.
93% of all human communication is non-verbal (Source: non-verbal group)

This is a wakeup call for businesses that are either not using visuals at all or are not using them properly enough to benefit from their full potential.

I’ve spent several years helping small to medium business strengthen their online brand and take a step towards digital transformation with the right use of visuals. What I’m about to share next will show you how businesses can make the most out of images and visuals in order to drive more traffic to their website, improve search engine ranking and boost social media engagement.

Get them Glued

How would you feel if you open a website and see blurred, poorly crafted and pixelated images on its homepage? You’ll leave without wasting another second possibly with a highly negative impression about the business.

Cleverly crafted high-quality images and visuals tend to grab viewers’ attention and get them glued to your website for longer periods of time. High quality images also help your content stand out in the clutter of a million images out there.

Align with Context

No matter how good the image is if it doesn’t align with the context it’s being presented in, your audience won’t be able to relate to it. In fact, having high quality visuals that don’t go well with the content or your brand’s perceived image can actually be harmful. After all, “true marketing is looking for opportunities to serve and contribute”, as Marketing Guru, Robin Pisciotta puts it, and not mere content bombardment.

When the image aligns well with the context, it not only gets the intended message across but also adds value to the ultimate user-experience.

Tell the Story

If you are in a travel business and you post a picture of an attractive tourism destination without adding any text describing the image, you can be almost certain that it’s not going to get shares and likes, let alone improve conversion for your business.

A short description, such as a caption can bring your image further to life and tell the story of your brand helping your audience understand the idea behind the image. The combination of images and text can produce a communicative power that neither can achieve on their own.

If you feel that there are several aspects to the visual, you may want to add small amount of text explaining each. The trick is to strike the right balance when adding text so it doesn’t undermine the power of the visual.

Give Only What’s Yours

Several images that we find online are copyright protected and one cannot use them as one’s own. Getting permission from the owner of those images ensures fair use and can save you from possible law suits due to copyright violation.

However, to stand out and be different, the best thing businesses can do is to use their own images.

If you don’t have permission to use copyrighted images and you can’t get your own either, you always have the option to search from hundreds of high-quality free images on websites like Flicker, which you can use along with proper attribution to the photographer.

Optimise for Google

Just like other content on your site, images or visuals can also be optimised for search engines so when your target audience searches for a product of service similar to yours, the images you are using will show up. The trick is to use keywords that are relevant to your target market. Make sure you have embedded these keywords in your image’s file name, title, alt-text as well as its description.

Additionally, it’s also important to size your images correctly. Images that are too big in size can take too long to load, boring your site visitors and driving them away. The longer a page takes to load, the more likely your viewers are to look somewhere else and the less likely you are to rank on the first page of Google search results.

Help It Go Viral

Using the right images can help increase engagement for your business. People expect to be able to interact with the visual content they see on a website. Businesses can make this easy for their prospective customers by providing ways to share, like or leave a comment. One such way is to make visuals pinnable for the social networking site, Pinterest. Other options include adding social sharing buttons to your image.

Content marketing is a diverse field giving you the luxury to share your ideas and promote your brand in more ways than you can imagine. One such way is through the use of powerful imagery or visuals.

You can use these tips to strengthen your brand and grow your business online.

Is your business struggling to create visuals that would keep your audience glued to your site? If you are looking for professional help to improve brand engagement and search engine ranking by harnessing the power of visual cues, then we might be able to assist you with this.

About solomoIT
SolomoIT is a boutique digital marketing agency based in Melbourne and Sydney since 2004. Our clients benefit from our years of experience in Digital Marketing. Our strategies are flexible and adaptable and we make sure our clients get the right message in front of the target audience with our expert guidance and holistic approach.
Are you ready to take your business to the digital era and “Think Digital”? Give us a call on 1300 430 949 or +613 8630 2810 for a consultation and we can help you take your business to the next level